I absolutely loved this novel right up until the final chapter, when we ended with a cliff-hanger: Phoebe is about to tell two older women in college about the abuse of power she has suffered. What happens next? Well I quite liked being left, like a good poem, on the half-step, able to decide as the reader.

But then there was an epilogue, whose very existence I felt undermined the “over to you, reader” moment and also centred on the manor house which in the body of the novel was just the stage set.

I wonder if the editor asked for more? In any case, in my own mind I’m going to choose to remember this novel as finishing with that final cliff-hanger: will Phoebe expose her academic supervisor and, if so, will it do any good?

As you may imagine, given the two real people behind the pseudonym Frances Wise, everything else about this novel is pitch perfect. I particularly liked the way that Claudia, Miles, and Deborah, the non-academics on this writing retreat in Cambridge, came into focus. There felt to be real hope for them, while the others remained in thrall to the Great God Academe and his cruel sense of humour.

4.5 stars if half stars were allowed, and the half star lost only because of the epilogue.

AD-PR: Many thanks to 4th Estate for the eARC via NetGalley. I will be telling everyone to read this book this summer.

Old friends gather for a writing retreat at a country house outside of Cambridge. Some are more successful than others but all have secrets. I had high hopes for this book but I found it incredibly difficult to engage with it. The characters seemed a little cliched and some of the themes were laboured and felt shoe-horned into the narrative. I struggled to finish it but I'm sure others will love it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

I really enjoyed this. At the start it reminded me of the David Lodge books but that is probably just the academic setting. I thought it was well written and I could feel the heat of the heatwave and visualise the house and its surroundings. I thought the characters were all varied, believable and well drawn and the genteel jealousies and polite sniping were humorously true to life.

I suppose there is not a great deal of plot and any secrets are easy to guess; it is more of a slice of life book. I liked the little nod to how the lives of brilliant, scholarly women are so often derailed by marriage and children. Claudia reminds me of the wife in another book I read recently who, as a matter of course it seems, is no longer seen by her husband and is associated only with his domestic comfort. I suppose Lawrence is just another example of the self absorbed and selfish man who sees nothing but himself and his wants and needs.

The book is very funny in places - when Claudia muses on all the things about Lawrence which annoy her and the times when Ash knows that Lawrence is keen to air his knowledge and vocabulary and mischievously gives him a chance to do so - banderole!

I liked the academic parts, some of which, like Donne, I know a little about but many others I can look up and learn about.

I liked the ending of the book with its hints of what is to come for our characters but I thought the epilogue was a little odd. It could have been the basis of several other books and then we could have had a version of Claudia's beloved Cazalet Chronicles..

I will wonder about these characters and will probably read the book again.

It took me a while to get into the very formal and restrained style of this book, but once I did it proved an interesting read. Egotistical Cambridge lecturer Lawrence and his compliant and wealthy wife Claudia, host a week-long writers retreat for a collection of friends old and new. What follows is a blow by blow account of an intense five days where rivalries, betrayals and revelations abound in deliciously scandalous detail. It's all good fun - until it's not - and the framework of the multiple characters and their needs works well, There's a slightly odd bit at the end which to my mind could just have been cut without any loss to the book's impact, but overall it's an enjoyable light read for the summer,

Eight writers, old friends of varying fondness, gather at a country house for a summer retreat. On paper it’s all pools and prose, shady corners and cocktails, dusk-drenched dinners and literary small talk with a bit too much wine. But the heat’s oppressive, the mood starts to curdle, and as the week unspools, the cracks—old grievances, not-so-buried jealousies, badly timed flirtations—begin to show.

Lawrence, successful and respected academic, has organised this retreat in the historic home he shares with his wife, and which was her family inheritance. He’s invited old friends and colleagues, all of whom he feels in some way superior to. His promise of a peaceful week is more of a showcase for his status. His wife, Claudia, once a successful classical singer, subsumed all that for family life and to support his career. Projecting indifference, she’s beginning to realise what that’s cost her—her diminishment, and her withdrawal from anything she once wanted for herself. Her bewilderment when she finds herself overwhelmingly attracted to one of the guests, and recalls who she used to be, is very powerful.

Lawrence’s interests and worries lie elsewhere.

The interplay between the guests, the playing out of tensions, is superbly done, and The Book Game itself—a game of bluff and appropriation—is a brilliant microcosm of the novel. Can you spot the real among the fake? Whose writing is this?

The book is richly layered: Britain’s shady historical past, gender and race, class, guilt, betrayal—tattooed, under the surface and also visible, across the lives of a convincing, diverse, rounded cast. Their inattention and skepticism eventually rattle Lawrence enough to bring forth the rot beneath his hip slogan t-shirts.

As one of the characters puts it:

“I’ve come to the conclusion that the actual point of conversations about… non-white voices and women on boards and all of that… is to keep mediocre upper-middle-class white men in power.”
​
Funny, moving, timely, and eloquent—one of my books of the year.

The Book Game by Frances Wise

Eight friends gather at Hawton Manor in Cambridge for a writing retreat, hosted by Lawrence, a Cambridge professor, and his wife Cecilia. Over the course of five days of a suffocating heatwave, tension simmers then erupts as old resentments and secrets come to light.

Oh this book is DELICIOUS! I read it in one huge gulp and immediately pre-ordered a copy for publication day, it's that good. So many sentences/paragraphs I wanted to underline, savour and return to. The writing is perfection, the characters are fabulously drawn and the academic and Hawton settings are brilliant! Very VERY highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

I was really looking forward to reading this. A 'literary thriller' centred around a writing retreat sounded like my perfect read and I was imagining something gripping and erudite,along the lines of Donna Tartt's 'Secret History. ' But I was disappointed.

It took me ages to work out which character was which (the 3 male guests, Josh, Miles and Ash all blended into one and all the characters sounded alike) and there was a crazy amount of head-hopping (often we were in one character's thoughts in one paragraph and in the next, in someone else's). It made for a very disjoined read.

In most books, there's a main character but in this, I wasn't sure who we were meant to be rooting for. Lawrence, the host of the retreat, was the most interesting and believable character but the others were pretty bland. None of them was particularly likeable, which meant that I didn't really care what happened to them. (Felt sorry for the peacock but that was about it).

The authors (the novel was written jointly by Chloë Houston and Adam Smyth, writing as 'Frances Wise') tried to inject some mystery with the introduction of the story of the ghost and the question over who had meddled with Laurence's typesetting/printing equipment but both of these threads soon fizzled out.

I started to skim-read after 50% of the story. But I gathered that the characters spent most of their time swimming and drinking (and not much writing was done!).

The ending was weird, as though the authors couldn't decide how to end the book. Like some of the other plot lines,it just fizzled out, leaving questions unanswered.

My first book to speak about today is The Book Game by Frances Wise. Set during a hot summer, eight friends spend a week in a country house in Cambridge for a writers’ retreat. During the day, they all seem to get along quite pleasantly, reading and writing by the pool. In the evenings, however, things begin to go a little awry. Old jealousies and new scandals surface, and by the end of the week the group can only cling to the carcass of their friendship. A book about regret and desire, about wrong choices and paths not taken, and a desperate attempt to seize what might be your last chance. “It asks what it means, in all senses, to be in the middle of life”.

I’m unsure how to collect my thoughts on this book, still quite uncertain of what to make of the plot points (although if you check my Goodreads you’ll see an unforgiving 2* rating, make of that what you will). This felt to me slightly like a middle-class soap drama – moments of civility punctuated by an array of classical witticisms, with occasional scenes of tension (spoilers…); an affair with a student, a historical act of manslaughter, plagiarism, a few homosexual eroticisms. All very high brow. I think about half of the characters were fully fleshed out, Laurence, Claudia, Lucy and Ines. The rest of the group I found a little two dimensional. I wanted something crazy to happen to tie together all of the weird events and secret transgressions, but it didn’t really happen. I was buckled in for a literary thriller, and I was definitely not thrilled. It is much more akin to the thrill of gossip over lunch, rather than the thrill of true murder, mystery and intrigue. That being said, I thought the descriptive writing was wonderful. I could imagine myself there in such vivid detail, standing at the gate with Lawrence as he tries to reason with his student, or by the pool with Lucy feeling my life fall apart. This book publishes in June, and would probably make for a good lazy summer read for those of us who don’t want to read about romance.

This was a fun, easy read—who doesn’t love a group of friends spending a week at a country estate? I loved the setting, with the pool, the garden, the late-night swims, and all the bookish vibes. The story had plenty of tension and drama, and it kept me turning the pages. I think my only issue was that I didn’t really like or feel close to any of the characters, which made it a little hard to care what happened. Still, I enjoyed it!

Intrigue, rivalry and lust among the chattering classes. Frances Wise’s debut novel revolves around an exclusive writing retreat at the gracious home of Cambridge don Lawrence and wealthy put-upon wife Claudia. The assembled party includes writers, artists, former students and colleagues all of whom are dealing with challenges in their lives. As they recreate Ottolenghi dishes and sip homemade elderflower wine, tensions simmer and rise, rapidly approaching boiling point. Frances Wise is the pseudonym for academics Chloë Houston and Adam Smyth both of whom have backgrounds in literature – fittingly their novel is awash with references to the work of people like Donne and Shakespeare. There’s a dash of mystery but character takes precedence over plot here, so whether or not it appeals likely hinges on readers’ responses to Wise’s cast. For me this was perfectly readable and decently written but I found it hard to stir up much interest in the fate of the key players so never found myself fully engaged with them or their personal, emotional journeys.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher 4th Estate

Great writing but unfortunately this story just wasn't very exciting. I kept expecting something 'more' to happen and it didn't. But regarding characters, they were well drawn and visual.

Unfortunately, this was not quite my kind of book. We meet a cast of characters who, in typical fashion, deal with their own problems, only in this case they are all very academic. In a way, the novel portrays a certain kind of social milieu, but it never quite clicked for me. I am an academic, but the conversations just bored me at one point. And the lesbian shock was really not necessary. All in all, a competent book, but one that I found hard to finish and one that I will not be thinking about a lot, I think.

Lawrence is a rather pompous member of the Cambridge academia. He decides to host a writing retreat at his huge pile in the Cambridge countryside. With so many different characters in such an intense environment, connections and old friendships are tested and strained, and some dark secrets spill out. An involving and literary read.

It is August, and eight old friends have gathered at a country house for a writers' retreat. By day, there is reading beside the pool or writing in the shady corners of the estate. In the evenings – drinks, dinner outdoors, games, midnight swimming.
But as temperatures rise in the stifling last days of summer, tensions do too. Old jealousies, new temptations and bitter rivalries bubble to the surface. By the end of the week, friendships – and lives – will have changed forever.

I found this quite a slow read. I was constantly waiting for something to happen. It’s well written with good descriptions and character build but, there are pages where nothing seems to happen. Then it all happens at the end. Very much a slow burn.

An enjoyable book, I found it well written and the characters were interesting and well developed. I found myself gripped to keep reading to find out what would happen to everyone. Unfortunately the ending was a real let down and I felt that there were many unresolved elements and unanswered questions.

A beautifully written novel, examining the relationships between a group of academics and old friends. A writing retreat which changes everything, bringing old grievances and secrets into the light. I did however feel a little let down by the ending which left a little too much unexplained. Highly recommended, nonetheless.

I put this down a third of the way through, as I prefer a fast-paced thriller and I don't think this book was for me. However thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to give it a go!

A tense read about the dynamics between the intellectual elite. Well written with excellent prose and characters to immerse yourself in

This was such an intense character study. I read an eARC of this book on NetGalley so thank you to the author and publisher.

This book was very character focused, there’s not a huge amount of plot and not a lot happens. Yet, I was completely and utterly fascinated. I couldn’t look away from the way some of these characters toed with disaster. Our story takes place when a group of people all connected to a writer and professor travel to his home in the Cambridge countryside for a writing retreat. Friendships will be tested, secrets will come out and people will rub each other the wrong way. Some of the characters are so deeply flawed, and others are wounded due to the proximity to the central character. I say central rather than main, because the book is told from multiple perspectives. Central because he connects all of the retreat attendees, but not main because the author skilfully gives the other characters the spotlight, making it so this is not just one person’s story. This felt deliberate to hold a mirror up to the central character and how he feels he should be the centre of everyone’s world. Indeed, his friends and families have hopes, dreams and desires that do not involve him and frustrations that grow due to his behaviour. Connections abound in this week long retreat and new relationships are formed and others fray.

The author manages to explore the characters flaws and hypocrisies so cleverly, whilst injecting subtle humour and without ever feeling preachy. This felt like such a deep psychological study as characters are presented with opportunities to learn and grow and we see some embrace it, and others bristle. By the end of this retreat we have such a clear picture of who each of these characters are and who will change for the better, and who will stagnate.

Fascinating, clever, gently humorous , I thoroughly enjoyed this.

I wanted to like it but it was not my cup of tea. The writing was amazing but at half past the story we were at the same point that the start, it was slow for a mistery book.